OER Annual Report of Accomplishments for Fiscal Year 2019

The Office of Educational Research (OER) completed its annual report outlining data on externally funded projects and grant activities in the College of Education (COE). Faculty productivity and efforts toward securing external funding remain high and have surpassed fiscal year (FY) 2018 in (a) number of currently funded projects, (b) dollar amount of research funding by faculty member, (c) number of collaborative proposal submissions, (d) dollar amount of collaborative proposal submissions, (e) number of collaborative currently funded projects, (f) number of proposal submissions, and (g) dollar amount of proposal submissions. The following represents a summary of external funding activities for FY 2019.

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Congratulations to COE Researchers

The College of Education (COE) received exceptional news from UF Research. The COE enjoyed a +12% ($3 million) increase in funded research expenditures from $24.6 million to $27.6 million over the past year. This is the largest increase of any of UF’s large or mid-size colleges. The COE also increased the funding received during the past year by +3%.

The COE was noted for having five principal investigators (PIs) who received funding awards of $1 million or greater during the past year: Julie Brown, Mary Brownell, Holly Lane, Phil Poekert, and Pat Snyder. Additionally, Phil Poekert was identified as UF’s #5 PI, having received $12.6 million in funding. This summer, COE faculty submitted 17 proposals/subcontract proposals to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) having a total value of nearly $18 million.

Overall, UF faculty have earned a record $900.7 million in research funding. A major reason for UF’s growth is its success at earning federal research grants, which increased 21% over last year to a record $639.2 million. Funding from the Department of Health and Human Services — UF’s largest sponsor — was up nearly 31% to $321.8 million. UF saw increased funding from most of the federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, up 60% to $61.3 million and the Department of Education, up 63% to $39.9 million. Funding from the National Science Foundation held steady at $62.9 million.

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From the IES Director: The Value of Cost Analysis

Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Director Mark Schneider recently commented that among the IES Standards for Excellence in Education Research, SEER Principals, cost analysis arguably presents the greatest challenge to a field in which economists are few and far between and cost analysis training is rare.

IES had been increasing its emphasis on cost analysis for several years before making it a required component for most grants in 2020. The reason behind this requirement is simple: IES believes it is not sufficient to recommend an effective intervention to educators without also informing them about the resources required to implement the intervention.

IES recognizes its responsibility for providing technical assistance to support high-quality cost analysis. In his recent blog The Value of Cost Analysis, Dr. Schneider outlines some of the resources IES has funded to assist with this year’s competitions and requests feedback on these resources and how to plan for next year’s competitions.

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OER Cost Analysis Seminar Resources

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES), among other agencies, is now requiring a cost analysis for funded projects. On July 29, 2020, the COE Office of Educational Research (OER) offered a workshop on cost analysis.

Using the IES Cost Analysis Starter Kit as the basis of this webinar, Elite Research, LLC reviewed the objectives, purpose, and elements of cost analysis; how cost analysis may differ between program types; and considerations that must be taken when working though calculations.

View the seminar PowerPoint presentation and the Zoom recording on the OER Research Support Resources website.

COE faculty member Wei Li also shared his paper Power Analysis for Two-Level Multisite
Randomized Cost-Effectiveness Trials
(Li, Dong, & Maynard, 2020) on methods of designing cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/1076998620911916

His team also developed a statistical tool PowerUp! (Li, Dong, & Maynard, 2020), which is free to download. https://www.causalevaluation.org/power-analysis.html

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UF DSP Research.gov and Biosketch/Current & Pending Forms Seminar Resources

On August 25, 2020, the UF Division of Sponsored Programs (DSP) offered a workshop to help principal investigators (PIs) transition from Fastlane to Research.gov for National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal submissions. The workshop provided a review of preparing a proposal in Research.gov and demonstrated how to create a bioksetch and current and pending document in SciENcv. The requirement to use an NSF-approved format for preparation of the biosketch and current and pending documents will go into effect for new proposals submitted or due on or after October 5, 2020.

Resources from the DSP training can be found here:

Research.gov Resources: https://research.ufl.edu/dsp/proposals/research-gov.html

NSF Updates: https://research.ufl.edu/dsp/proposals/nsf-updates.html

Workshop Recording:  https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/6d232ebc488b466fa305813f2a10c1891d

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UF Research Development Offers Grant Writing Training for New Faculty

UF Research Development will be hosting the following grant writing session for faculty at the Assistant Professor (tenure track) level hired in 2017 or later.

Title: Budget Basics
When: Wednesday, October 7, 2020
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Place: Virtual Meeting

Follow this link to register: https://ufl.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cJ8FDCDiAT4DIxv

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Save the Date: Fall 2020 NIH Virtual Seminar on Program Funding and Grants Administration

Reprinted from Save the Date: Fall 2020 NIH Virtual Seminar on Program Funding and Grants Administration posted on the NIH Extramural Nexus webpage

If you are new to working with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants process as an investigator or administrator, then mark your calendar for Tuesday, October 27 – Friday, October 30 for a unique opportunity to learn, share, and meet virtually with NIH and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) experts.

For updates on the latest registration and agenda information, see the NIH Regional Seminar Home Page. Registration is free and opens September 9, 2020.

The following are some seminar highlights:

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UFIT Provides Free Storage and Collaboration Tools

Access to cloud-based collaboration tools has been essential for UF’s successful transition to hybrid campus life. In case you didn’t know, all students, faculty, and staff with active GatorLink credentials can get UF-Dropbox, G-Suite, and OneDrive from the GatorCloud.

The advantage to using the versions UFIT provides is that you get an additional layer of security with your UF account and unlimited Dropbox and Google Drive storage! There is a very helpful chart on the GatorCloud homepage outlining what you get with each service. UFIT also recently published a new video overview of GatorCloud services.

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UFIT Offers HiPerGator Training and Consulting

New and returning faculty have access to research computing expertise through 1-on-1 consulting and many free training options offered each semester. Remote consultations and support are available Monday through Friday.

During the university’s continuing response to Covid-19, Research Computing facilitators use Zoom during their listed walk-in office hours (https://www.rc.ufl.edu/help/walk-in-support/). You can click on each facilitator’s name on this page to connect via email on the walk-in support page, if the consultation and support office hours do not work with your schedule.

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Awarded Projects for August 2020

Congratulations to Lynda Hayes for her award from the Florida Department of Education; Herman Knopf and Elizabeth Shenkman for their subcontract award DHHS Flow Through from Florida’s Office of Early Learning; Jennifer Park-Jadotte for her subcontract award DHHS Flow Through from Florida’s Office of Early Learning; Philip Poekert and Pengfei Zhao for their award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Paige Pullen and Philip Poekert for their award from the Charleston County School District; Paige Pullen for her award from Trident United Way; Patricia Snyder and Mary McLean for their subcontract award California Department of Education Flow Through from Napa County; and Patricia Snyder, Maureen Conroy, and Herman Knopf for their subcontract award DHHS Flow Through from Florida’s Office of Early Learning.

For more details, see the Awarded Projects table.

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Submitted Projects for August 2020

Best wishes to Thomasenia Lott Adams, Pasha Antonenko, Philip Poekert, Masoud Gheisari, and Markus Santoso for their proposal to the National Science Foundation; Christopher Anthony for his subcontract proposal IES Flow Through from Northeastern University; Chris Curran and Philip Poekert for their proposal to the U.S. Department of Education/IES; Chris Curran and Christopher Redding for their proposal to the National Science Foundation; Chris Curran for his subcontract proposal IES Flow Through from the University of Maryland Baltimore County; Nicholas Gage, Ashley MacSuga-Gage, Paige Pullen, and Matthew Schmidt for their proposal to the U.S. Department of Education/IES; Nicholas Gage and Ashley MacSuga-Gage for their proposal to the U.S. Department of Education/IES; Nicholas Gage, Cynthia Griffin, and Kathrin Maki for their proposal to the U.S. Department of Education/IES; Lynda Hayes for her proposal to the Florida Department of Education; Kristy Boyer and Maya Israel for their proposal to the National Science Foundation; Wei Li for his subcontract proposal IES Flow Through from the University of Texas at San Antonio; Kathrin Maki for her subcontract proposal IES Flow Through from the University of Houston; Corinne Huggins-Manley for her subcontract proposal IES Flow Through from Boston University; Corinne Huggins-Manley for her subcontract proposal IES Flow Through from Western Carolina University; Jennifer Park-Jadotte for her subcontract proposal DHHS Flow Through from Florida’s Office of Early Learning; Jennifer Park-Jadotte for her subcontract proposal Louisiana Department of Education Flow Through from Children First Professional Development Center; Rose Pringle for her proposal to the National Science Foundation; Paige Pullen and Nicholas Gage for their proposal to the U.S. Department of Education/IES; Paige Pullen and Catherine Cavanaugh for their subcontract proposal IES Flow Through from RMC Research Corporation; Paige Pullen for her proposals to the Charleston County School District; Brian Reichow, Patricia Snyder, and Matthew Gurka for their proposal to the U.S. Department of Education/IES; Kimberly Driscoll, Matthew Schmidt, Anastasia Albanese-O’Neill, Laura Jacobsen, and Sarah Westen for their subcontract proposal NIH Flow Through from the Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center; Sondra Smith, Jennifer Doty, and Joy Gabrielli for their proposal to the U.S. Department of Education/IES; and Joni Splett for her proposal to the National Institutes of Health/NIMH.

For more details, see the Submitted Projects table.

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